With just two games left in the regular season, the race for the NWSL Shield is coming down to the wire.

Just five points separate first-place San Diego and sixth-place OL Reign — and mathematically, no team has been eliminated from the playoffs yet. That means that the final two weekends of the regular season will be a race to the finish line. The top six teams in the standings at the end of the regular season will make the playoffs.

OL Reign have dropped off in recent weeks, which leaves them just barely hanging on to the final playoff spot with 28 points. The San Diego Wave, meanwhile, have jumped back into the top spot of the league rankings.

Stock up: San Diego Wave

Once again, San Diego is trending upward, back atop the NWSL standings courtesy of Saturday’s 2-0 win against second-place Portland. Star forward Alex Morgan got her first goal in four months, a good sign for the Wave as they became the first (and, so far, only) team to clinch a spot in the playoffs.

“All-around, it was a huge performance from every single one of us,” midfielder Danielle Colaprico said after the game.

And now, San Diego is setting its sights on its next goal: the NWSL Shield. The Wave are playing in just their second season since joining the league as an expansion franchise, but they have won four of their last five matches.

“I can’t speak highly enough of my squad tonight,” San Diego head coach Casey Stoney said. “I think they bought in, they were engaged, they were focused. They worked so hard, and I thought they deserved the win tonight.

“Now it’s about that mentality next week, because yes we clinched playoffs, great, but what can we now achieve? That’s the standard that we’ve set tonight and really, really proud of them.”

Stock down: OL Reign

OL Reign managed to hold onto their playoff spot by their fingernails Sunday in a 1-1 draw with the North Carolina Courage. But the reigning NWSL Shield winners have managed just four points in their last five games, and they aren’t coming up with the wins needed to secure a playoff spot, let alone the prize for the best team of the regular season.

With several teams, including the Houston Dash and Angel City FC, hot on their heels, OL Reign is going to have to find a spark if they want to send off retiring star Megan Rapinoe with an NWSL championship. But the Washington Spirit and Chicago Red Stars likely will provide tough challenges to close out season.

Potential sleeper: Nobody

Recent run of play makes it difficult to find a potential sleeper for the Shield. While many teams are in the mix for the playoffs, several of the teams in postseason position are just trying to hold onto their spots.

Gotham FC are in third place, but they have won just one game in their last five — but that is better than fourth-place North Carolina, which has won zero. While the Spirit won this weekend, they went winless in the four games before that. Angel City FC have not lost in five games, but clinching the Shield is a mathematical impossibility. Even winning their last two matches would bring them to just 31 points – less than the Wave’s 33.

At this point, the NWSL Shield looks like San Diego’s to lose.

NWSL standings (Oct. 2, 2023)

  1. San Diego Wave, 33 points
  2. Portland Thorns, 32
  3. Gotham FC, 30
  4. North Carolina Courage, 29
  5. Washington Spirit, 29
  6. OL Reign, 28
  7. Houston Dash, 26
  8. Orlando Pride, 25
  9. Angel City, 25
  10. Racing Louisville, 24
  11. Chicago Red Stars, 24
  12. Kansas City Current, 22

Trinity Rodman is in the middle of a stellar stretch of soccer.

The forward scored in each of the U.S. Women’s National Team’s friendlies Sept. 21 and Sept. 24, and then, on Saturday, she came up big for the Washington Spirit.

Rodman broke a tie with a goal in stoppage time to lift the Spirit to a 2-1 victory over the KC Current and their first league win since June.

“It’s been a little rough the past few games,” defender Tara McKeown told the media afterward. “But just to get that win and know that we can come back from hard situations going into fighting for a playoff spot and into the playoffs, I think that that’s really going to help us.”

The victory snapped a seven-game winless streak for Washington (7-8-5, 29 points), which moved into fourth place in the NWSL standings.

The goal was Rodman’s fifth of the NWSL season and her first in league play since June 3. Rodman, 21, did not score in the World Cup despite starting three games.

Her goal came Saturday after she outran her defender and then smacked a left-footed shot into the back of the net. She celebrated with the dance made famous by former Washington Wizards star John Wall, a wide smile spread across her face. Ouleymata Sarr scored the other goal for the Spirit, in the 52nd minute, after Debora Cristiane de Oliveira opened the game’s scoring for with a 21st minute goal for the Current.

Washington hosts the OL Reign on Friday, and then wraps up the regular season Oct. 15 on the road against the North Carolina Courage.

Trinity Rodman is coming into her own for the U.S. women’s national team, and she credits the “extremely competitive” environment as a catalyst for her success.

While Rodman is just 21 years old, the journey to the USWNT has been a long one for the star forward, who told Soccer Bible that she first started taking soccer seriously at 6 or 7 years old. And when she started watching soccer, that sparked a “different” type of love for the game.

“I didn’t watch soccer as much as I think a lot of people did,” she said. “But when I did watch Tobin Heath or Alex Morgan, seeing them on the field, particularly Tobin Heath, watching her creativity and seeing the things that she would pull off in a game intrigued me so much and it made me want to do the same things on the field. I think watching them made me realize that actually that’s something I want to do, something I want to get better at, something I wanted to do in a stadium.”

Now, she says, she “thrives” on the pressure of the big moments. None have been bigger than her first World Cup, which she called “mind blowing” and “insane.” And the shift to the national team has been difficult, leaving her feeling like she is “behind” and needs to catch up.

Yet she is finding her way, as she proved in the last two games for the national team. Her connection with Morgan on the front line resulted in a goals in each of the September friendlies against South Africa.

“The environment is extremely competitive, they have such high standards that were set long before I came along,” she said. “And you’re trying to match energies all the time, trying to build these connections as best as possible with the lack of time I’ve had with these girls.

“The lack of experience I’ve had in this environment has been difficult, but the people around me have been great and they push me to limits I didn’t know that I could be pushed to, so that’s also been very interesting to see.”

The Washington Spirit are having a bit of fun with Taylor Swift’s foray into professional sports.

The “Cruel Summer” singer took in an NFL game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Chicago Bears on Sept. 24 before taking off in a “getaway car” with Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. During the game, she enjoyed a meal accompanied by ketchup and “seemingly ranch,” a social media observation that has become a full-fledged meme.

The Spirit played into the joke as they extended an invite to the global superstar.

“Hey @taylorswift13… Just wanted to let you know that we have a match this Saturday at Audi Field,” the Spirit wrote on X. “We’ll have chicken tenders with ketchup and ranch on hand too.”

The singer wouldn’t be the first person connected to the Kansas City Chiefs to be linked to the NWSL. Patrick Mahomes and wife Brittany are co-owners of the Kansas City Current, the very team facing off against the Spirit this weekend.

Swift also is rumored to be attending this weekend’s Kansas City Chiefs–New York Jets “Sunday Night Football” game at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Since she will be back on the East Coast, maybe the Spirit can entice her to Audi Field. After all, she’s a proven fan of the U.S. women’s national team, so the NWSL could be the next step.

The U.S. women’s national team’s front line showed signs of promise in the pair of friendlies against South Africa, led by rising star Trinity Rodman.

In Sunday’s 2-0 win, veteran USWNT forward Alex Morgan connected with Rodman in front of the net, setting up the 21-year-old forward for the first goal of the game. Morgan also had assisted on Rodman’s goal in the first match against South Africa, a 3-0 victory.

After Sunday’s win, Rodman thanked Morgan, and Morgan responded in kind.

“Another game, another dime ball from Alex Morgan,” Rodman said. “Thank you to her, she’s an assist queen at the moment. Hopefully I can complete a pass to her in front of the goal.”

The connection has not gone unnoticed, and neither have Rodman’s abilities. Megan Rapinoe, who made her final USWNT appearance Sunday, has called Rodman – among other young players – the future of the national team.

“That’s why I have such peace about moving on, is I look at players like Soph Smith, Naomi, Trin,” she said. “The squad is in very, very good hands if those are the ones that are holding it moving forward.”

Interim head coach Twila Kilgore said Sunday that Rodman has been “really, really good.” Her success has been building since the World Cup, when Rodman realized “a little bit more” the role she was going to play and adjusted her focus and concentration to “a different level,” Kilgore said.

“And she’s carried that with her into these past two games,” she continued. “And obviously scoring goals is a really positive thing which we’re excited to see. But yeah, I expect these things from Trin to be honest. This is kind of the expectation moving forward. I’m really happy. But I know there’s more in there.”

With her two goals against South Africa, Rodman has scored four total for the USWNT in 2023. She also has scored four goals for the NWSL’s Washington Spirit, and she’ll next take the field for the Spirit at 7 p.m. ET Saturday against the Kansas City Current.

NWSL expansion club Bay FC has hired Albertin Montoya as its inaugural head coach, the club announced Wednesday.

The league officially announced the franchise in April. Bay FC will begin play in 2024, joining the returning Utah Royals.

A longtime resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, Montoya, 48, served as interim head coach of the Washington Spirit in 2022. On Monday, he told The Athletic that his stint in 2022 gave him “the bug for the professional game again.”

“The Bay Area has been such a great area with professional sports, and how can we not have a women’s team here in Northern California?” Montoya said. “And now that the opportunity is there, I’m just honored, and it’s just a privilege, that the organization is trusting me (with this role).”

In a team statement, Montoya added that he is “honored to be a part of the foundation upon which our team’s history will be built.”

Bay FC general manager Lucy Rushton told ESPN that she had narrowed down to a list of about 40 candidates. But when traveling around the league to research best practices, Montoya’s name kept coming up in conversation.

“Every time I say I’d go to Kansas City or I’d go to Washington Spirit or wherever it was, I’d go and people would ask me about Albertin,” Rushton said. “‘Are you looking for a head coach? I mean, haven’t you got Albertin Montoya there?’ I swear everybody knows Albertin, and so it was ironic to continually find myself in these places where people were telling me to make this guy the head coach.”

Rushton added that playing style and identity will be key as the team moves into its first season, so she saw Montoya’s history of developing players as a definite plus. In addition to his time with the Spirit, Montoya coached the U.S. U-17 women’s national team from 2011-12. He also founded the Montoya Soccer Academy and Mountain View Los Altos Soccer Club.

He has lived in Northern California nearly his entire life, growing up in Mountain View and playing professionally in the area in the 1990s. He also served as co-head coach of the California Storm of the Women’s Premier Soccer League.

“I’ve been around for quite some time, so I know the players that are around the league that have the Bay Area ties,” Montoya said. “And if things come together the way we see it, we’d like to bring in some of the local talent that’s playing in other places around the league, and maybe do more of a Bay Area team. But we’ll see.”

The San Diego Wave suffered two major losses Saturday night.

The team lost to the Kansas City Current, 2-1, falling out of first place in the NWSL standings. And perhaps more important for the team’s long term future, star striker Alex Morgan suffered an injury in stoppage time and limped off the field.

San Diego coach Casey Stoney said afterward she had no updates on Morgan, who didn’t score a goal for the 13th consecutive game. Last season, Morgan won the NWSL’s goals title and never went more than three matches without scoring

The Wave can reclaim the top spot in the standings with three regular season games remaining, but they’ll need to play better than they did Saturday; the Wave didn’t record a shot on goal in the first half, losing the possession battle 57 percent to 43 percent.

“I was extremely disappointed with our first half,” San Diego coach Casey Stoney told reporters.

Morgan wasn’t the only NWSL star to suffer an injury this weekend. Washington Spirit midfielder Ashley Sanchez also suffered an injury during the team’s 2-0 loss to Gotham FC on Saturday. Spirit coach Mark Parsons said afterward he had update on Sanchez, who has scored five goals and recorded an assist this season.

Ashley Sanchez has returned to the NWSL with a vengeance.

The 24-year-old midfielder did not play in the 2023 World Cup, despite making the 23-player roster for the U.S. women’s national team. But upon her return to the NWSL, she has solidified her place as one of the game’s brightest young stars.

The Washington Spirit signed Sanchez to a three-year contract extension last Friday. While Sanchez was previously set to be an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season, her new contract runs through 2026.

“Keeping Sanchez with the Spirit is critical for this club,” Spirit coach Mark Parsons said in a statement. “Her world-class technical ability and goal-scoring quality are very important to the success of our team.”

Sanchez said she’s “looking forward” to continuing her career in Washington, having been “fortunate to take a lot of strides in my game” during her four years in D.C.

Among those strides was earning a place on the USWNT’s 2023 World Cup roster. Sanchez has 25 career caps, three goals and four assists with the USWNT. Before the World Cup, she made eight appearances in 2023, averaging 50 minutes per match. But at the tournament, the attacking midfielder did not see the field, having been replaced on the depth chart first by USWNT newcomer Savannah DeMelo, and then by veteran defender Emily Sonnett.

Sanchez has been open about her role at the World Cup, noting that what then-head coach Vlatko Andnovski told her ahead of the tournament was different from what played out in Australia and New Zealand. The USWNT fell to Sweden in a penalty shootout in the Round of 16, marking their earliest exit ever from a World Cup.

“Let’s just say the role (I was told I would fill) was not what I played,” she told the Washington Post.

Since returning to the NWSL in late August, Sanchez has made a statement on the field. Just 40 seconds into her first game back with Washington, she scored a goal in a 1-1 draw with the Houston Dash. Sanchez’s fifth goal of the season put her six behind league leader Sophia Smith. And her 1.20 shots on target per 90 is good for ninth in the league, ahead of star players like Alex Morgan.

“Revenge mode was coming,” Parsons said after Sanchez’s return. “It came really quick, and I think that helps. Being involved, she’s now feeling good.”

When Ashley Hatch took the field on June 18, the world didn’t know the U.S. women’s national team roster. But Hatch did — and she knew she wasn’t on it.

So as the 28-year-old forward suited up for the Washington Spirit, she felt like she was “suffering in silence,” she said on the latest episode of the “Snacks” podcast.

Ahead of the 2023 World Cup, Hatch received a call from USWNT coach Vlatko Andonovski, who let her know that she would not be making the trip to Australia and New Zealand. But the public announcement wouldn’t come until the following week, which left Hatch in limbo.

Just one day after Hatch’s call with Andonovski, the Spirit were scheduled to fly to Kansas City to face the Current. Hatch asked if she could postpone her own flight by one day, so she could process the “really difficult” emotions that came along with the World Cup snub. Four of her NWSL teammates — Trinity Rodman, Ashley Sanchez, Andi Sullivan and Aubrey Kingsbury — had made the cut.

“I was aware that my teammates had made it and I didn’t want to take away from their incredible accomplishment,” she said. “So I actually had a phone call with our coach. And I was like, ‘I think it’s best for me, but also best for the team if I just come a day later. I need a little bit of extra space.’ I also don’t want to be this dark cloud looming over these four other players who made it for the first time and I know the team wants to celebrate them.”

Hatch gave credit to the Spirit coaching staff and her teammates for giving her the space she needed to cope with the loss of her World Cup dream. In the two years leading up to the tournament, she had been a regular feature on the USWNT roster.

A solo training session at the Spirit facility helped her get back on track. She flew out to Kansas City the next day to join the team for the road match.

“I needed to find my purpose and re-center myself and also step out on the field without any pressure or any eyeballs from anyone,” she said.

Still, throwing herself back into the spotlight proved difficult, even though the wider public did not yet know about the USWNT roster. She played the first 45 minutes of hte match, but she asked to be removed after halftime.

“It was really difficult. It almost felt like I was suffering in silence because the whole world didn’t know yet,” Hatch said. “It was a lot. I actually ended up asking if I could be subbed at halftime, just because I couldn’t take it emotionally and mentally. But I was proud of myself for trying and taking that step.”

For the past four years, Hatch has worked with a mental performance coach, which helped her navigate her feelings about the snub.

“I feel like if I was younger in this situation, I probably would have pushed through a lot more pain,” she said. “I still pushed through some pain, but I knew how much pain to push through in order to get myself in a better spot.”

Ashley Hatch is using her 2023 World Cup snub as motivation to make an even bigger comeback to the U.S. women’s national team.

Despite her steady presence on the squad for the last two years, Hatch did not make the cut for the 23-player tournament roster. The 28-year-old forward made her snub look even more surprising during the NWSL Challenge Cup, where she thrived with the Washington Spirit.

On the latest episode of the “Snacks” podcast, Hatch said her snub is “definitely” pushing her to return to the USWNT better than ever. But she also acknowledged the difficulty of navigating the emotions that came with the snub — especially since she never got a detailed explanation as to why she did not make the team from former head coach Vlatko Andonovski or his coaching staff.

“The hard part for me is, I didn’t get a ton of closure or [a] specific reason of why I didn’t make it,” she said. “And so I feel like that’s hard to grasp onto this one thing that I know I need to do better to be able to make it.”

As a forward, “you need to score goals,” Hatch knows. So that is an area she’s continuing “to try and be be better at” – and succeeding. She has nine in the NWSL regular season, second in the league behind Sophia Smith.

Even before the World Cup, though, she could count herself as one of the few USWNT forwards that had scored a goal in 2023. Overall, she has five international goals through 19 appearances.

“Snacks” co-host Lynn Williams, who found herself in a similar position to Hatch ahead of the 2019 World Cup, offered up some advice as Hatch looks to put her snub in perspective.

“I had to take a step back and recognize that it’s a subjective opinion and it’s always going to be subjective,” Williams said. “That doesn’t reflect me as a player. I could be the best Lynn Williams I can possibly be, scoring a billion goals, and if a coach doesn’t see me in the group, I just can’t change that.

“It’s not overnight because you’re still devastated, but I’m just going to be the best Lynn Williams I can be. You can only be the best Ashley Hatch you can possibly be and if the coach doesn’t see that then the coach doesn’t see that.”

As Hatch processes her emotions, she is immersing herself in the Spirit’s playoff hunt, but she still feels the sting.

“It is hard when you feel like you did everything you were asked to do and then you still don’t make it,” Hatch conceded. “So I feel like I’m still going through the process of [that] becoming a motivator. Right now, in the spot that I’m at right now, it still hurts a lot.”